4.
The world spun around him. He rocked on his feet. He couldn’t believe what was happening.
The mutilated woman, whom Kingsley had accepted was no longer alive only minutes ago, was now writhing on the ground before his eyes. At first, he had thought it was muscle spasms. He’d heard that sometimes leftover electric signals in the body could cause that.
But when her back arched and her head rose, turning to face Kingsley, he understood that she wasn’t dead. At least, not anymore. The discoloured eyeballs, the jittery way her limbs moved – it was exactly like the crazed man had been.
This was some actual zombie shit going on.
Kingsley’s breaths grew shallow. He began to back away.
“Oh no,” Sammy murmured, everyone else speechless.
The woman’s expression remained exactly how it had been when her stomach was being torn into. The eyes were still wide and unblinking. She folded her legs and tried to stand, but they noticed now that one of her legs was horribly twisted. The woman struggled to balance before toppling over and resorting to dragging herself across the tarmac road with her hands.
Catching a glimpse of the back of her injured leg, Kingsley saw a piece of debris jutting from the thigh. He realised that she must have hurt herself in the crash.
Suddenly, he felt somewhat sorry for this wretched woman. Why did she crawl towards them so desperately like that with no regard for her own health?
At the same time, he saw that she was nowhere near as much a threat to them as the man had been.
Blame it on his hazy, detached mental state, but Kingsley was curious and he had a crazy idea out of nowhere.
He glanced sideways at his friends. They were all mesmerised. Then he took a step towards the crawling woman. The shocked, dying gaze remained on her face, and she wasn’t crying out in pain or anger or excitement. She made no noise. But Kingsley could sense an intensity in her as he neared the woman; the snapping of her mouth grew quicker, one of her arms stretched out towards his feet.
He inched his right foot closer to her head, tapped it on the ground in front of her. Her outstretched arm grasped his boot. Her jaw gaped wide, ready to bite down on him.
With slight panic, Kingsley tugged his foot free from her surprisingly fierce hold.
He’d satisfied his curiosity enough. Kingsley turned around. “Let’s just get away from here,” he said.
They moved like ghosts off the road and back into the woods, Kingsley peeking now and then at the teeth marks in James’ wrist, the leaking red craters like tiny spewing volcanoes.
*
They had brought only two vehicles on the trip. James’ SUV and Eric’s pickup truck were both in a tree-lined car park next to a nearby fishing lake. Kingsley drove the former with James in the passenger seat, clutching his injured arm in pain. Eric drove his own car, Sammy riding with him.
The two vehicles crept out of the tree shade on the winding country road, then sped along the A120, heading for Braintree.
They weren’t able to speed for very long, though. Only minutes after they had joined the A120, the traffic started to swell to a point where they became packed, bonnet-to-boot, in a long column of idling vehicles. Not ideal for their current situation. They needed to get help as fast as possible, and they still were getting no service on their phones.
Kingsley kept eyeing James in concern. He knew that James must have noticed his repeated glances and was probably feeling uncomfortable about it. Being a burden to those around him was something James dreaded, to the point where he was constantly making an effort to be as unobtrusive and helpful to his peers as possible.
But Kingsley couldn’t help but check on his friend. James seemed physically sick. He was sweating and his skin was paler than usual. He’d even taken off his purple beanie which almost never left his head in public. Maybe it was just the pain of his injury combined with the shock of the morning’s events, because there was no way he could already be falling ill from tetanus or something else he had contracted from the bite.
Kingsley stared ahead, straining to see how far the traffic lines stretched and whether they were progressing.
But he noticed something that gave him pause.
People were getting out of their cars and walking up the road between the lanes. What were they trying to see? There would be nothing except long lines of vehicles waiting to enter a clogged roundabout, or stuck behind some traffic lights up ahead.
But a lot of people were leaving their cars now. Some had shut their engines off and were standing outside talking with others. None were smiling.
Kingsley had the same bad feeling he'd had earlier, before they had stumbled upon the crash site. A heaviness in his gut.
He ejected his seatbelt and turned to James. “I’m gonna take a look,” he said. “Just wait here.”
“No, I’m coming with you. I need some fresh air, anyway.”
They both stepped out of the car, Kingsley glancing at the pickup behind them to see Eric and Sammy exiting to join them.
The late morning sun was harsh on their exposed necks, the air weighty with exhaust fumes and body odour. Next to them, a young girl cried in her mother’s arms, the pair leaning against a dusty car. The girl was bleeding from a gash on her shoulder. In the western distance toward the town, dark clouds roiled on an otherwise clear horizon... No, not clouds – smoke.
They wandered up the stagnant lanes, each of them in bewildered silence while arguments, cries and the hum of nervous conversation reverberated down the queues. As the four of them moved up the dual carriageway, the commotion became louder, more heated. Fear and confusion were vivid in the voices.
Kingsley noticed for the first time the few abandoned cars scattered on the opposite carriageway across
